Gotcha! The number of students nabbed by the NYPD for cutting school jumped 9 percent last year.

Police corralled 16,229 kids under the TRACK program – the Truancy Reduction Alliance to Contact Kids – during the 2002-2003 school year.

In the prior year, 14,928 students were apprehended.

Under TRACK, kids caught skipping class are sent to truancy centers operated by the city’s district attorney offices. Social workers at the centers interview students and call their parents, who are required to pick up their kids.

If they don’t, school safety officers return the students to their school.

“We’re patrolling where the truants are hanging out in different areas of the city. During the spring and the warmer months, it’s the beach. During the winter, it’s different areas of Manhattan,” said Capt. John Oliver, who heads the truancy squad of the NYPD’s school safety division.

The TRACK program was started in 1998 by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was so impressed that he put up funds to replicate it throughout the city. There are now 13 TRACK centers.

“Many children are victimized or in danger when they are not in school. People realize their children will be reluctant to report the crime if they’re victimized because they don’t want people to know they weren’t in school,” Oliver said.

The truancy crackdown means fewer students become crime victims.

It also means fewer idle teenagers are causing criminal mischief.

“By getting them back in school and giving them an education, they get a head start in life,” Oliver said. “We have numerous cases of kids turning around their lives.”

Many teens found are from broken homes. For example, the NYPD and the Brooklyn TRACK centers last year picked up 43 students who were identified as runaways, including 24 whom law-enforcement officials listed as “missing persons,” said Hynes aide Stacey Frascogna.

Frascogna said by getting parents involved, there’s family and student accountability built into the program. About 70 percent of parents do show up at the centers.

“The parents are inconvenienced. It’s easier for the students to be in school,” she said.